July 2019 :: On My Shelf

Happy July! I just finished a lovely beach-and-ice-cream-cone day, and am picking up on the pace on my reading list
 
READING
I finished How to Be a Good Creature by Sy Montgomery in one sitting. What a charming and sweet love note to the animals that taught Sy their life-changing lessons! It's got me thinking about my animals and who who make my top-ten-teachers list. The easy ones:

1. Brandy (life is meant to be an adventure. play hard, nap hard.)
2. Sushi (life is also wildly ironic and naming your beta after dead fish will mean he lives 5 years past life expectancy)
3. Noelle (dogs are family... not the terrorists I'd previously believed. she also taught me how to be responsible for a pet and she wasn't even mine. IDK how my neighbors felt about me knocking on their door to play with their lhasa apso but it here we are.)

I read Sy's The Soul of an Octopus a few years back and recommend it to all my book/science/animal loving friends; I have a new fascination with those little aliens.
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LISTENING
In June, I attended Arts Fest Beverly for the first time as a vendor - what a great show! I enjoyed meeting everyone and practically hugged the kind souls that took some saltwater palette artwork home (or just brought me puppies to play with). My friend that helped me run the show made a playlist and introduced me to Carly Rae Jepsen version 2019, and that was it. I was hooked, dancing and singing along for the rest of the afternoon.
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PODCASTING
​One short podcast that stood out to me this week was from Ted Talks Daily: Why you should define your fears instead of your goals, by Tim Ferriss (here's a link to the Ted talk itself). He created a system that forces you to tackle your major decisions and anxieties head on, writing out in detail what your'e afraid of happening; what resources you have to lessen the impact of those outcomes; and what your life will look like in six months, a year, three years if you take no action. My kind of strategizing!